Overcoming the culture of nice
Standing in a friend and former professor’s kitchen, I was complaining. Mid-rant, I said, “I don’t want to be a pain, but…”
And he stopped me midsentence. “Yes. Yes, you do,” he smiled. “You want to be a pain. You don’t know that about yourself, Carol? Because everybody else knows that about you.”
I was shocked. Not over the fact that he would say it (we’re good enough friends that we’re way past the niceties). I was shocked because it was true, and I didn’t know it.
